Keyword: equine influenza

There is no need to fear or panic...well, maybe just a little need, as the arriving shipment of overseas horses to the now infamous Eastern Creek Quarantine facility in Sydney revealed a health risk Sept. 24.

MAF Biosecurity New Zealand is retesting samples taken from horses imported directly from the United States to the Karaka quarantine facility due to conflicting test results that indicate the presence of equine influenza, the Sportsman of Australia has reported.

The upcoming years in Australia will be effected in many ways following the devastation that was equine influenza, in particular on the racetracks.
For instance, while Victoria remained, astonishingly, EI free for the duration of the crisis in Australia, broodmare owners in Victoria had no option but to send their mares to Victorian based stallions. As a result we now have a set of statistics that defy belief.

The interstate shipping of horses in Eastern Australia is just beginning again, four months after an equine influenza outbreak shutdown racing and delayed the breeding season in New South Wales and Queensland. The horses were mostly yearlings entered in the Inglis Melbourne Premier Yearing sale

Only 114 days following the discovery of equine influenza (EI) at Centennial Park in Sydney, Australia, 66 sale horses from New South Wales will make the journey across the Murray River into Victoria on Monday.

Australian health officials didn't seem too concerned when stallion Encosta de Lago arrived in late August at the Eastern Quarantine facility with an elevated temperature and nasal discharge, according to a groom with Coolmore. The groom also told a judge leading an inquiry into an outbreak of equine influenza that procedures for monitoring the people going in and out of the quarantine were not being followed closely.

Inquiry reveals that five stallions being shipped from Japan to Australia were not checked when they arrive in Sydney because the plan had stopped in Melbourne first. One of the five stallions, Black Hawk, didn't even make it to Sydney even though the health certificate indicated the stallion should have been on board.

The aftermath of Australia's equine influenza outbreak is aggravating an already tense rivalry between Victorian and New South Wales Thoroughbred breeders. Victoria breeders are asking that all yearlngs prepped in New South Wales for the Inglis Premier Sale in March be kept out of the sale. Australia currently has a ban on interstate horse transport. NWS breeders have said all vaccinated horses should be allowed to be shipped to the sale.

The aftermath of Australia's equine influenza outbreak is aggravating an already tense rivalry between Victorian and New South Wales Thoroughbred breeders. Victoria breeders are asking that all yearlngs prepped in New South Wales for the Inglis Premier Sale in March be kept out of the sale. Australia currently has a ban on interstate horse transport. NWS breeders have said all vaccinated horses should be allowed to be shipped to the sale.

Three months after Australia's first-ever outbreak of equine influenza, an independent inquiry into the history and management of the outbreak is uncovering troubling flaws in the government's quarantine procedures, according to recently published inquiry transcripts.

The equine influenza outbreak has not been able to penetrate the outer shell of excellence of the Melbourne Cup (Aus-I). In fact, the Aus$5 million ($4.6million) Cup, at two miles Nov. 6, features as good a field as ever.

In what appears to be a bellwether for upcoming Thoroughbred events in Australia, Inglis & Son Sales company announced it will move the dates of all its yearling sales next year. The major New South Wales race clubs are expected to announce next week they will both be changing their race dates, too.

Coolmore in Australia has bowed to broodmare pressure and will not be sending former champion galloper Holy Roman Emperor (Danehill-L'on Vite) back home. The European two-time group I winner is instead out of quarantine and is heading to the stud's New South Wales farm to cover mares for the remainder of the year.

The Queensland racing industry is in ruin, so Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has declared the horse flu crisis a "natural disaster." She has placed the state's Disaster Management Group in charge of handling the outbreak and announced an emergency relief package for people directly employed in the racing industry.

Magic Millions, which conducts the largest movement of yearlings in Australia with its eight-day sale each January, has acknowledged the sale won't take place as previously advertised because of the equine influenza outbreak.

New South Wales racing was to return Sept. 22 to Sydney's Rosehill Gardens, with 12 races planned and more than 210 horses engaged. The morning of the meeting, that all changed. Horses at Warwick Farm, a track that had previously been clean of equine influenza, came down with the virus. Rosehill officials were forced to scrap the meeting, as many horses set to compete had been trained at Warwick.

Darley has decided to send one of the world's truly great stallions, Elusive Quality, to the New South Wales Hunter Valley's purple zone. The farm decided Sept. 21 which stallions to send home and which will remain in Australia to cover mares for the remainder of the crippled NSW breeding season.

Just when the newly created "purple zone" in Australia's New South Wales was to reinvigorate the beleaguered breeding season, the country's star stallion -- Redoute's Choice -- has been stricken with equine influenza.

Yet another massive setback to the breeding program in Australia' New South Wales occurred over the weekend, with another of the shuttlers locked up in quarantine testing positive for equine influenza.

In a Sept. 14 meeting at Keeneland Race Course, William Inglis and Son -- Australia's leading Thoroughbred sales agency since 1867 -- sought American help to fight the ramifications of an equine influenza outbreak that could result in the loss of half of the country's Thoroughbred foal crop of 2008.

American Thoroughbred breeders interested in supplying bred mares for the 2008 Australian spring sales should attend a meeting by William Inglis and Son, Australia's leading Thoroughbred sales agency, at the Keeneland Racecourse on Friday.

Now the Australian equine influenza outbreak has started to get really ugly: Lawyers have been called in at the behest of major breeders and owners to launch a massive class-action lawsuit against the government.

Australia's leading sale company, William Inglis & Son, has postponed the 2- and 3-year-old Breeze Up sale and the October Racehorse sale scheduled for Oct. 28 because of the equine influenza outbreak.

The outbreak of equine influenza that is jeopardizing the Australian breeding season has breeders from Down Under thinking about sending their mares to Kentucky-based stallions this fall and winter so they can be bred on Southern Hemisphere time.

The equine influenza outbreak in Australia has had an unexpected positive implication for the Breeders' Cup World Championships, as Hong Kong-based Viva Pataca is now scheduled to compete at Monmouth Park and become Hong Kong's first runner on racing's biggest day in the United States.

The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries said 835 horses on 119 properties across the state were infected with equine influenza as of Sept. 3, with another 2,900 horses on 319 additional properties considered suspect of having EI.

The chances of the New South Wales lockdown being lifted at the end of the coming weekend took a dramatic turn for the worse when a Thoroughbred in training returned a positive for equine influenza Aug. 30.

Racing Victoria has breathed a huge breath of fresh air into the Thoroughbred industry in Australia by going against the recommendations of its sister states in the wake of an equine influenza outbreak, but the problems is far from resolved.

All track work halted Aug. 26 at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney, Australia after three Thoroughbreds showed symptoms of equine influenza. It was the first time EI appeared to have crept into Australian racing circles.

Catastrophe struck Australia's entire horse population - and in particular, the Thoroughbred racing and breeding industries - with the blanket cancellation of all race meetings Aug. 25 after an outbreak of equine influenza.

The racing and breeding industries in Australia took an almighty turn for the worse in the early hours of Aug. 25, when the government stopped movement of horses across the country because of a diagnosis of equine influenza.

Veternarians in North America have commended Australian quarantine authorities for sticking with their stringent quarantine measures to protect the country from an outbreak of equine influenza after a quarantined horse at Eastern Creek near Sydney showed clinical signs consistent with the virus.

Australia's major studs have been rocked by confirmation that more than 30 of the world's leading shuttle stallions will be detained in quarantine for up to a month after the detection of a virus in one horse recently imported from Japan.